Sunday, April 19, 2015

A brief Review of CC1 Creature Compendium

A large number of monsters for your old school games stated out in dual stat format, one set for Osric/Oe/1e style the other for BX/Labryinth Lord style; the dual-stating seems a tad silly to me given how similar in nature stats are to many games but I do know DMs that simply will not bother with otherwise good RPG materials simply because the stats don’t match their game closely enough so familiarity with similar sorts may be what inspired the dual stats in this book.

A number of the monsters appeared online in the past but the compilation and low price still makes this book rather handy. To me a lot of the monsters feel dungeony which is good as they make worthy inhabitants of a DMs megadungeons but may otherwise be crowding a campaign. There is still a large number of monstrous beasts herein despite the dungeony feel that look to make wandering in the wilderness hazardous as well.

Some monster are seemingly a bit lack luster (“oh no a giant wood pecker”) but still often have an interesting wrinkle to make them worth using now and again in a campaign.

The level spread in the monsters that is pretty wide but still mostly hitting the level 4-10 sweet spot of old school play. Pretty much everything is illustrated in a style that reminds me slightly of the Hacklopedia of beasts but with less comical gore.

I mention the monsters being “dungeony” a couple times above but that’s a good thing that means they will fit into a classical dungeon without raising a whole bunch of questions from anyone except the most annoying sort of player. some of them have lethal gimmicks but very few (if any) have an annoying shopping list of powers. After 2 or 3 special abilities a monster often stops being special to me.

CC1 The Creature Compendium A worthy addition to a classic dungeon fantasy campaign. What old-school campaign couldn’t make use of cyclorcs?

About Me

A RPG player who thinks he has something to share. Discovered wargaming at the age of 9 or so thanks to Avalon Hill. Started playing D&D in the later days of the 70's as one of those annoying kids and currently games with spouse, family and friends.